


The Arrow and the Song

by whatyoufish4



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:46:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6304927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatyoufish4/pseuds/whatyoufish4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An adventure gone bad, with Stone paying the consequences. Luckily, he's got friends to be there for him -- each in their own way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrow and the Song

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of the 2015 LIT Secret Santa gift exchange, as a present for Tumblr's Crisis-Girl. My prompt was Team as Family, angst (w/o character death), and plenty of Baird and Stone. Which fell pretty neatly into my wheelhouse, all things considered.
> 
> Set sometime during Season 2. Apologies for taking liberties with Baird’s past; it’s all fairly innoculous, but there’s no reason to think it won’t be Jossed one day as we find out more about her ...
> 
> (Originally posted at http://whatyoufish4.tumblr.com/post/136347235795/crisis-girl-hello-happy-holidays-from-your )

i.

“MR. JENKINS! Colonial Baird, Mr. Jenkins – anybody –” 

What happened?” demanded Baird, jumping up from her desk. She’d looked up when the backdoor had first roared to life, of course, as she always did when the rush of wind and burst of light and sheer force of magical energy burst into being; but she’d gotten so accustomed to seeing Librarians staggering clumsily and rapidly out from it that it hadn’t really registered that anything was wrong. In fact, it hadn’t been the awkward movement that had grasped her attention at all. 

It had been the panic in Cassandra’s voice.

“He’s – we were –” Ezekiel was stuttering, all his normal charm and pose forgotten. Between him and Cassandra was a pale and silent Jacob Stone, his eyes closed, clearly only still on his feet thanks to the fact that his fellow Librarians had looped Stone’s arms across their shoulders and were bearing most of his weight. 

“What happened?” She repeated the question more calmly this time, not because she felt any calmer but because she knew it would help her charges focus. 

Jones was nearly vibrating with a panicked energy that had nowhere to direct itself. “We were in Athens, right, trying to chase down Hermione’s Pomeranian that the clippings book sent us after –”

“Not Pomeranian.” Stone’s voice was shaky and weak, but there was enough exasperation buried within the exhaustion that Baird found it slightly reassuring. “Pomegranate. Pomeranian’s a dog breed. And it’s Persephone, not – not Hermione ...”

“What. Happened.” Baird kept her voice clipped this time, because she knew if she didn’t head them off now, it would be another five minutes of arguing before she could get them back on track – and quite frankly, looking at Stone, she didn’t know if they had five minutes. 

Cassandra picked up the thread. “We were in a cave, an underground cave, under one of the temple ruins, and Jacob got attacked by this – this –” She glanced at Ezekiel for help.

“He got bit by this not-snake thing,” finished Jones, adjusting his hold on Stone when the other appeared to be on the verge of collapsing entirely.

“Stone got bitten by a – wait.” Baird’s eyes flickered towards the bandage tied around Stone’s left forearm. “Jones, did you say he _didn’t_ get bitten by a snake?”

“I said he got bitten by _not_ a snake,” said Ezekiel. “Like, you would think it was a snake, but it wasn’t actually anything like a snake at all. It was like the opposite of a snake.” 

Baird stepped forward and gently eased Stone’s arm off of Cassandra’s shoulders, nodding for Cassandra to continue supporting him from behind while Baird began to unwrap the bandage for a better look at the damage. “So, if it didn’t look like a snake, then what did it –” Eve broke off as Jenkins suddenly materialized at her side. 

Carefully draping Stone’s bad arm across his own shoulders – and if she hadn’t been so worried about Jacob, it would’ve been comically touching to see the far-taller Jenkins stooping so much to manage it – Jenkins nodded towards the low cot that was suddenly in the center of the room. When, _how,_ had that appeared? “Over there, if you please, Mr. Jones?”

It was only a few paces away, but it gave Ezekiel a chance to do something, helping lead Stone towards the cot and then getting him situated on the edge of it, Cassandra fluttering nervously behind them. Ezekiel eased Stone onto his back while Jenkins knelt by the cot, the caretaker pulling out a pocketknife that Baird had never seen him carry before. Moving with a careful deliberateness, Jenkins slit apart both the bandage knots and Stone’s ragged sleeve, pulled the shreds of cloth away, and froze. 

“Oh,” said Jenkins, softly, after a long, drawn-out heartbeat of a moment. “Oh, dear.”

“What’s wrong?” Baird asked, or started to ask, but the second word died in her throat. There were two large puncture wounds in Stone’s forearm, still softly oozing blood – but far more alarming were the dark green lines running beneath his skin, radiating outward from the wounds in thick, spiderweb formations.

“What?” Stone wheezed, struggling to sit up. Cassandra, standing beside him, promptly pressed a hand to his good shoulder, bracing him in place. “What is it?”

“You’ve got, like, Iron Man veins going up your arm,” Ezekiel informed him, from where the thief sat perched on the edge of Stone’s cot. 

“I-I’ve got ... got what?” 

“Y’know, like in Iron Man 2. When Tony Stark finds out his power source is actually poisoning him, and he gets all those vein-things on his chest and neck and stuff. And he has to invent a new element for his arc reactor, with the map and all. Honestly, you make fun of me for not knowing mythology all the time, but do you ever take an interest in movies?” It was all delivered in Ezekiel’s typical breezy delivery, but Baird could see that Jones’s hands had clenched into fists so tight, his knuckles were white.

Stone slid his gaze from Ezekiel to Jenkins. “Jenkins, what ... what the hell bit me?”

“I’m afraid I’m not sure, Mr. Stone.” Jenkins hovered a hand over the still-bleeding wound. “’Magical poisonous wounds’ is a significantly larger category than one might think. It could be anything from a basilisk lizard to the venomous snake of Skaði.” His gaze darted up towards Ezekiel and Cassandra. “Can you give me anything else, description-wise, besides ‘not-a-snake?’”

It was Stone who answered. “It was dark ... and there was somethin’ about that thing. Every ... every time I try to remember it, it ... it slips farther away. Like I can’t quite ...”

“Can’t quite grasp onto the memory,” finished Cassandra. “Do we have to know what it was? Aren’t there any magical potions or spells that can counteract all venoms? Like a – a cure-all for poisons? 

“What about a bezoar stone, like in Harry Potter?” Ezekiel asked.

“Don’t you got ... got anythin’ besides movie references?” Stone managed a soft chuckle that almost immediately turned into a cough.

“Hey, I read all the books, too!” Ezekiel’s indignant voice did not match the fear in his eyes.

Jenkins was silent for a long moment, and Baird’s stomach dropped as she wondered if he was about to answer that there was nothing he could do, nothing any of them could do. 

“There is something,” he said at last. He came to his feet then, stopping to give Stone’s chest a light pat, and then he took Baird by the elbow and pulled her aside. “There’s something that cures any magical poison, no matter what that poison may be.”

Baird studied his face. Behind them, Stone and Ezekiel had resumed bickering, Cassandra interjecting whenever they paused to glare at each other. “It’s not something we have in the Library, is it?”

“I am afraid not, Colonel.” 

“Tell me where it is. I’ll get it.”

“As it so happens, it’s not that simple. It’s in the possession of someone who ... owes me.” Jenkins turned to the nearby table and lifted his suit jacket from where it was draped across the back of a chair. “Which means I’m the one who needs to retrieve it.”

“Someone who ‘owes’ you?” Baird echoed, as Jenkins began to slip on the jacket. “Owes you what? A favor? Or the more traditional gift that’s best served cold?”

Jenkins shrugged his jacket into place, then gave her a half-smile. “As they say: why ask questions, Colonel, to which you already know the answer?” He nodded towards Stone. “He’ll need lots of fluids, and keep the wound bandaged. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Jenkins –”

“Take care of him,” said Jenkins, and Baird stopped, her gaze caught not so much by his intensity, but by something deeper in his eyes. Was it fear?

No, she realized a moment later. It was sadness.

“I will,” she said. “We will.”

The caretaker nodded, then turned for the door leading out of the Annex. A moment later, he was gone.

 

ii.

“I’m just saying, mate. What has a Hufflepuff ever done for Hogwarts?”

“T-two ... two words for you, Jones. Ced ... Cedric ... Diggory.”

Ezekiel gave an elaborate snort, grateful for the excuse to do so, grateful for the chance to sink into their usual banter. After all, it wasn’t just Stone’s fear that Ezekiel was hoping to keep at bay with their lighthearted sniping. It was his own. “What did Cedric Diggory ever do for Hogwarts besides –”

Besides die. It was what he’d been about to say, until the word had caught in his throat. Luckily, Stone didn’t seem to have noticed the gap.

“How about ... h-how about giving Harry that hint ... about the dragon egg?” Stone’s chuckle was a wheeze in his throat. “Y’think that kid would’a ever ... ever figured it out on his own?”

“Hermione would’ve gotten it eventually,” Ezekiel retorted. Baird had finished rebandaging Stone’s arm and had gone with Cassandra to grab tea out of the Annex’s tiny kitchen, leaving Ezekiel with the job of keeping Stone’s mind off of the fact that he had a magical, deadly poison coursing through his system. Stone’s eyes were closed, and Ezekiel took the opportunity to really look at the other man’s arm. The dark green tendrils spiderwebbing underneath Stone’s skin had spread out beyond the edges of the bandage, and were now encompassing his entire forearm. Stone suddenly winched, his jaw clenching at a sudden burst of pain, and Ezekiel felt the bottom of his stomach drop out again. It had been doing that quite a lot in the last hour.

“So wh-what’ve you got ... against a p-perfectly good House ... like H-Hufflepuff, huh?” Stone coughed again, eyes still closed. 

“Well, I mean, you just gotta look at the evidence.” Ezekiel drug his gaze away from Stone’s arm and began ticking off the points on his fingers. “One, nobody interesting or powerful ever came from Hufflepuff.”

“Wh-what about ... Helga?”

“Helga Hufflepuff,” Ezekiel informed him, “Did not _come_ from Hufflepuff. She _founded_ Hufflepuff. Anyway: two, if we rank the Houses, Slytherin is clearly the best –”

Stone’s chuckle this time was a weak but genuine sound. “You ... you would say that. Ya don’t need ... to be a Sorting Hat ... to know what House you’d wind up in.”

“And you’re just defending Hufflepuff because you know that’s where you’d wind up.” Ezekiel crossed his arms over his chest in a huff, and if the movement also happened to hide his shaking hands, well, that was just a nice bonus, wasn’t it? “You and Cedric Diggory, the only halfway-decent people to ever get saddled with that place.”

“Halfway-decent!” Stone smiled, even as his eyes squeezed shut tighter in pain. “Never thought I’d ... get such a compliment from you, Jones. I must really be dyin’.”

And suddenly all the witty banter dried up in Ezekiel’s throat. For once in his life, Ezekiel Jones was speechless. He ought to say something back, ought to keep the banter going, keep Stone’s spirits up – but he couldn’t. Because the truth of the matter was that this man – this friend – had become far more than a halfway-decent part of Ezekiel’s life. The truth was, his friends had become everything. 

But he couldn’t say it. Because then Stone would know how afraid for him Ezekiel really was. 

“Hey.” The softness in Stone’s voice seemed to be something more this time, something more than just weakness or pain. Ezekiel looked at him, and saw that Stone was looking back at him, understanding, and there was something else in Jacob’s gaze that made Ezekiel swallow hard against the sudden lump in his throat. “I’m not ... not gonna die, Jones. You got that? I’m gonna be just fine.”

“Pretty sure I oughtta be the one reassuring you,” said Ezekiel, his voice rough in his throat.

“Eh, that’s ... that’s alright, Jones.” Stone closed his eyes again. “We can take turns.”

_Pretty sure,_ thought Ezekiel, _that you’re a Gryffindor through-and-through, Stone._

 

iii.

“Mind if I ... if I ask you somethin’, Cassie?”

“Of course not,” Cassandra said, giving a smile that she wasn’t sure was reaching her eyes. Baird was currently in Jenkins’s lab, trying to scrounge up more bandages – Jacob kept bleeding through them – while Ezekiel was standing halfway up the Annex staircase, cross-referencing every configuration of “animals, venomous” and “cures, magical” he could think of. Cassandra was now sitting perched on the chair they’d pulled up beside Jake’s cot, trying to grapple with the unusual emotional sensation of being the one on this side of the sick bed.

“How d’you ...” he paused to grimace while another wave of pain wracked through him. Cassandra adjusted her hold on his good hand, allowing him to squeeze her hand more tightly through it. The dark green tendrils had spread the full length of his wounded arm, and the further they spread, the more it seemed to hurt him. “How do you ... keep everyone so at ease around you?”

Cassandra’s brow creased. “What do you mean?”

“I won’t mince words, Cass. You and I ... we’ve had our differences. Though they’re mostly ... behind us.” He gave her a tired, wry wink that made her heart give a painful thump in her chest. “But I’ve told you ... from the start ... I’ve always liked you. You’ve always been bright, and kind, and ... and a lotta fun.”

She nodded, not sure where he was going with this.

“But you understand ... more than anyone else here ... how hard it can be to keep your spirits up when ... when you’re dyin’. Let alone the spirits ... of people around you.” He paused to cough, and Cassandra bit her lip, suddenly at a loss.

“You’re not dying,” she said firmly. “Mr. Jenkins is going to get you whatever spell or potion it is he went to get, and it’s going to cure you. You’re going to be fine.”

“That’s not in dispute ... I’ll give ya that.” His smile did meet his eyes, and Cassandra swallowed hard at the lump in her throat. “I trust Jenkins to do ... everything he can. But it might not ... be enough.”

She nodded, steadying herself. She would not cry; not now. Crying, sadness, fear – she’d learned a long time ago that none of these things were weaknesses; in fact, there could be a strength in allowing oneself to feel such emotions. But she’d also learned, a long time ago, that there was a time and place for them, and this was not it.

“And whether ... it’s enough or it isn’t ... that doesn’t change the fact that right now ... I’m dyin’.” He shifted in place, wincing, and Cassandra gave his hand another squeeze. “I’ve made ... some kinda peace with that. But I want the others ... to find that peace, too. So I need to know ... how you do it. How do you help us look at you ... and see somethin’ other than a dyin’ Librarian?”

Cassandra smiled wanly. “But sometimes, when you look at me, that’s exactly what you see, isn’t it?”

Beneath the pain and exhaustion, he had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

“I used to hate it, you know. How everyone would look at me like the tumor was all that they could see. They stopped seeing me at all.” She paused, memories suddenly sharp and painful in her mind’s eye. “I understood, of course. They were worried about me, or scared, or just ... uncomfortable. It wasn’t so much that they knew I was going to die, I don’t think. It was that they knew that I knew what was happening to me. If someone knows they’re going to die, what could you possibly say to them that matters? What could anyone? There’s no making that comfortable for anyone.”

Jacob paused for a moment, his eyes studying her face. “So how ...” he stopped to cough again. “How do you do it?”

“I don’t,” she said simply. “I learned a long time ago that how other people feel about my illness isn’t my problem. Nobody can control how anybody else feels about something. All you can deal with is your own feelings.”

“Then that’s ... what I’m gonna have t’ do.” He smiled at her. “It’s just hard ... to see everyone so upset. Wish ... wish I could do somethin’. Pro-protect you guys ... from it. I feel like ... I owe you guys that much.”

“Not this time, Jake.” Cassandra couldn’t have stopped the tear that slipped down her cheek if she’d wanted to. “This time, we owe you.”

 

iv.

“B-Baird. Tell me ... t-tell me ... a story.”

Baird’s head jerked up. It had been hours since Jenkins had left them, and while time admittedly always seemed to hold in a kind of standstill in the Annex, Baird knew the hour was late. Cassandra and Ezekiel had refused to leave despite Baird’s protestations that they needed sleep, and then had promptly fallen asleep anyway, curled up in chairs set to the side of the room. And, Baird realized, her own head had been nodding as she sat beside Stone’s cot, until his voice had broken through the half-daze she’d been sinking into. 

“A story?” Baird cleared her throat. “What do you want to hear a story about, Stone?”

“Any – anything ...” Stone’s voice was wheezier now, each breath harder and harder to take. He’d begun to have noticeable trouble once the spidery green lines had reached his chest; now, Baird saw, they’d reached the base of his neck and begun to spread up the sides of his throat. For the hundredth time, Baird resisted the urge to pull out her cell phone. She didn’t know how to reach Jenkins when he wasn’t actually in the Annex anyway, but the impulse was there all the same. Stupid, though. She had no way to contact Jenkins now, and would’ve been reluctant to distract him during a potentially tense moment even if she had.

Besides, the caretaker already knew how little time Stone had.

“A story,” Baird repeated softly. Without really thinking about it, she’d reached over and taken Stone’s good hand, squeezing it gently between her own. “I don’t know how good I am at telling stories, Stone. I’m kind of an action-oriented kind of gal –”

Stone gave a gasping chuckle. “And we ... wouldn’t have it ... any other way.” He squeezed his eyes shut through another wave of pain. “‘S’alright, though. T-tell me ... a story ... about you.”

“About me?” Baird said, slightly surprised at the idea. Then she smiled a bit. “Did I ever tell you about the time my brother and I decided we were gonna repaint our house?”

He shook his head, smiling faintly. 

“Well, I guess I was about ten years old ...” Baird launched into the tale, realizing, as she did so, that she’d never told Stone – never told any of them – that she’d even had a brother. Family was a topic she’d always felt was best left unexplored.

But these people were her family, now. She could share these stories.

So she did. She told Stone about her childhood, how she and her brother fought all the time – but how they were also allies, constant companions for each other as the family moved house time and time again. She told him about going from town to town, from school to school, and found ways to find humor in the awkward resettling, the struggle to make friends with virtual strangers before she found herself moving on again. It had been hell for someone like her, someone who longed to have roots ( _to build,_ as Moriarty, damn him, had said so succinctly and accurately), but now that she had those roots, it was easy to tell the story, say, of her decision to introduce herself as Anastasia Romanov to her fourth-grade class.

“Y-you ... you didn’t.” Stone was laughing weakly, but it was the first time he’d managed a smile through the pain in the last hour.

“I did!” Baird laughed with him, remembering the expressions of her classmates, and her own reckless self-assurance. “We’d just learned about her in my old elementary school, and I figured that we’d be long gone before the kids in my class figured out I really couldn’t be a lost Russian princess. They hadn’t even covered that chapter in history yet. Besides, I can do a _kick_ -ass Russian accent.”

She delivered the last in said accent, and the two of them laughed together, even as Stone squeezed her hand tight as another wash of pain engulfed him, and the tears that pricked at Baird’s eyes weren’t entirely from laughter.

Then she told him about joining the military, and the friends she’d made there, the family those people had become, and if there had always been a little bit of a cool distance that she made sure to keep between everyone around her and herself, it hadn’t meant she hadn’t cared about those people, hadn’t meant she hadn’t had good times – _great_ times, really. She told him about the missions she’d gone on (the ones she was allowed to discuss, anyway; that old training hadn’t gone away), especially the ones that had gone completely unexpectedly – like the time someone had called in a bomb threat, and all they’d found in the abandoned building, once they’d searched it top to bottom, had been a box of abandoned puppies.

“They-they ... were ... all right?” Jacob’s voice was faint enough now that she had to strain to make out the words.

“Who? The puppies? You think I’d try to cheer you up at a time like this with a story about injured puppies?” Eve chided gently. “All ten of ‘em were in the pink of health. And I came this close – this close! – to get saddled with the lot of ‘em!”

Baird told him that story, and as many others as she could think of, and then after she told the story of finding her letter bringing her to the Library, she didn’t know what to say next. She looked down at Stone’s face. The green tendrils of poison had reached the base of his chin now, and his breathing was so shallow she nearly couldn’t make out the sound of it.

“I – I don’t have any more stories left for you, Jake,” she whispered softly. “I want to keep talking to you. I just – I don’t know what to say.”

Surely she could tell him another story; an old bedtime tale from her childhood, perhaps. But that felt silly. Poetry? That seemed even sillier. Unless – 

The old verse surfaced in her head suddenly, and before she could think better of it, she heard herself begin to recite.

 

_“I shot an arrow into the air,_  
_It fell to earth, I knew not where;_  
_For, so swiftly it flew, the sight_  
_Could not follow it in its flight._

_“I breathed a song into the air,_  
_It fell to earth, I knew not where;_  
_For who has sight so keen and strong,_  
_That it can follow the flight of song?_

_“Long, long afterward, in an oak_  
_I found the arrow, still unbroke;_  
_And the song, from beginning to end,_  
_I found again in the heart of a friend.”_

 

Her voice was breaking by the last stanza.

She looked over at Stone. His eyes were closed, his breathing non-existent. Was he smiling faintly? Yes, there was just the hint of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

“It’s Longfellow. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” Baird’s voice was soft. “You probably already knew that, I bet. I’m not a big poetry fan, but I had to memorize that one back in high school. I always kind of liked it. Even though I’m not sure I ever really understood what it meant ... until I met all of you.”

The smile had faded from Stone’s lips. He was, she realized, slipping into unconsciousness – or something worse.

“I’ve had friends before, but you guys – you’ve been more than that. You’re my team. My ... my family. And, Jake – I’m sorry. I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more to protect you. To keep you safe –”

The tears were beginning to fall, and she saw no reason to stop them, and just as she’d taken in a shuttering breath to really start sobbing – just then, she heard the Annex doors burst open.

And turned, heart in her mouth, to see Jenkins dashing towards them.

With a stopped vial in his hand.

 

v.

He didn’t want them to think he didn’t understand what they’d done for him.

Once Jacob Stone had gotten back on his feet – a process which took several days, even after Jenkins’s mystery potion had done its curing work – his first order of business was to thank his friends for saving his life. But he’d had his own ideas of how to go about doing so.

Ezekiel had been the easiest. One House scarf in Slytherin colors – modeled on the scarf as appearing in the first two films in the franchise, naturally. Ezekiel had made it very clear during Stone’s captive-audience status that the original design was way better than the replacement look; much more authentically Hogwarts. Jacob hadn’t bothered to put a card with the scarf, but he gathered, from the almost sheepish grin Ezekiel had shot his way the next day at the Annex, that the ex-thief had figured it out.

Cassandra had been a bit trickier. Not because he didn’t know what he wanted to say, but because he wasn’t sure how best to say it. But, at last, he figured it out, and left for her a framed picture of the three of them in the Annex, grinning like idiots into the camera, arms slung around each other’s shoulders, Ezekiel sneaking in a pair of bunny ears for Stone. He topped off the offering with a note. _Cassie: When I look at you, I see my friend. – Stone_

For Jenkins, he’d set a box of tea at the caretaker’s desk. They hadn’t been able to convince the old knight to share with them exactly what he’d had to do, or had to promise, in order to procure a cure for Stone, but Jacob had an inkling that it had been nothing pleasant, and he knew he owed the man more than he could ever make amends for. And so Jacob had done what he could to say thank you. _Jenkins: For when you’re the one feeling under the weather. – Stone_

That just left Baird.

 

vi.

“And what’re you three up to?” Baird asked that morning. It was Stone’s first day back in fighting form at the Annex, and she had been prepared for a day out in the field with them – though the clippings book had been oddly silent for the last few days, almost as if it knew Jacob needed some time off to recuperate. “What magical mystery is on the agenda today, Jenkins?”

But Jenkins just smiled at her. “I believe your charges are the ones who can best answer that.”

“What?” Baird turned back to her Librarians.

“We decided we all need a day off,” said Stone. “Together.”

“Actually, Stone’s the one who decided,” said Ezekiel.

“But we think it’s a great idea,” said Cassandra. “And definitely a lot of fun.”

“You’re just saying that because you think you’ll be able to use your ‘mathemagics’ to cheat!” Ezekiel rolled his eyes.

“It is not cheating!” Cassandra was clearly affronted. “Anybody could use simple rules of geometry and physics to have the same advantage!”

“Not if they’re not a math geek.” Ezekiel’s eyes were now stuck in permanent roll-mode, it seemed.

“Math geek!” Cassandra jammed a finger into his face. “I’ll have you know –”

“Alright!” said Baird. “What are you all talking about?”

“Archery,” said Stone, giving her a beaming grin. “We’re all takin’ the day off to head down to the archery range. We thought maybe you could come with us, give us some pointers on aiming and accuracy.”

“Archery?” said Baird, flabbergasted. And then she saw the look in Stone’s eyes, and remembered.

_I shot an arrow into the air ... It fell to earth, I knew not where ..._

“Jenkins?” said Stone, thankfully giving Baird a moment to swallow past the lump in her throat. “You gotta come too, man.”

“Oh, I’m not sure that I –”

“Oh, come on!” said Cassandra cheerfully. “You’ve probably a regular Robin Hood!” Suddenly her face changed. “Wait, so – did you know Robin Hood? Is – is he real?”

Jenkins looked mildly affronted. “Was the famous, infamous Robin Hood a real person? But of course.”

“Really?” Ezekiel looked suddenly intrigued. “What was he like?”

“Oh, about what you’d expect from the legends and stories. Although the films never get it quite right.” Jenkins sighed. “For instance, she wasn’t nearly as partial to green clothing as everyone seems to imagine –”

“Robin Hood was a woman?!” Ezekiel and Cassandra asked the question in near-sync but with entirely different tones of voice.

“Oh, that,” said Jenkins. “Right. Yes, I always forget that the films do tend get that wrong, as well ...”

“Robin Hood was a girl!” Ezekiel’s eyes narrowed. “Wait, so does that mean Maid Marian was actually a dude?” 

“No,” said Jenkins, now looking mildly perplexed.

“But – oh. Oh!” Cassandra grinned in delight. 

“Alright, well, Ms. Hood, then – how was she at the whole thieving skills? Do the movies get that right? That’s the important thing, y’know.”

But whatever Jenkins answered, Baird had stopped paying attention. She was looking at Stone, who was chuckling. When he met her gaze, his eyes were twinkling.

“Archery, huh?” asked Baird quietly, as he came to stand beside her.

“Yeah, well – figured we could all do with a day off.” Stone put his hands in his pockets, looking out at his fellow Librarians. “A day together.”

“A family outing?”

“Something like that.” He grinned. “What d’you say, Colonel?”

Baird smiled back at him. At all of them. “I say – Let’s go get some arrows.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> (Title and poem courtesy of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The Librarians characters copyright to TNT. The angst is all on me. – whatyoufish4)


End file.
